Lessons
by Stunt Muppet
Summary: In a past that might have happened, Liz and Jo learn from each other. Liz/Jo, AU


She was going to walk out one evening, she really was. She'd walk right out the front door and just let anyone stop her.

After that business with the Autons resolved itself, Liz thought that was the end of her involvement with UNIT, and had looked forward to returning to Cambridge and her research team. She had a new appreciation for her co-researchers; they might pester her for advice, and they might be uncreative thinkers, but at least they didn't give her orders.

And then Lethbridge-Stewart informed her that UNIT was in need of a scientific advisor in a more permanent capacity. And that no one more qualified than her had pursued the opportunity.

She'd protested, of course - bad enough that she'd been dragged from her proper job, but to be kept here whether she liked it or not? Surely that wasn't legal. But no, apparently he was perfectly within his rights to compel service from her now that she was already here. He wasn't going to (to do anything more than hint at said compulsion would be indiscreet), but it would be within her best interests to agree to a term of service.

She'd had to agree - what choice did she have? But at the end of her two years, she made sure to inform him, she was going right back to Cambridge, no negotiations, no exceptions. He'd seemed quite content with that.

And so she'd taken on the post of scientific adviser, in charge of investigation, analysis, and neutralizing hostile materials or individuals. True to Lethbridge-Stewart's words the position needed someone like her, someone with a broad spectrum of knowledge - one day she might be tracking a suspicious meteorite cluster, the next analysing an unknown microbe taken from a space capsule.

But she still missed her co-workers, and the careful, thorough work that came from dedication to a single project. And she was still going back at the end of those two years, whether they'd found a replacement for her or not.

And now the Brigadier was telling her she needed an assistant.

"I don't need an assistant," she insisted, not looking his way.

"An extra pair of hands around the lab wouldn't help?" He had that smile on, she could just tell, the one that meant that he wasn't actually going to listen to her at all and already knew how this conversation was going to end.

"I manage just fine with two."

"Miss Shaw, many lives could have been saved at Wenley Moor if you didn't have to be in two places at once."

He wasn't wrong, as annoying as it was to admit that. Even just on a practical level, it'd help if she didn't have to fetch all the equipment and supplies she needed. Even more so if she could have sent someone else out to run diagnostics on the mentally-regressed staff while she investigated the subterranean reptiles themselves. But Liz could also sense the careful manipulation behind his request; it was much harder to leave a job when you had someone working for you. And if she left at the end of those two years, they'd have nobody but a less-qualified junior partner to rely on.

Well, she wasn't going to fall for it. "An assistant isn't any help if I don't know what I'm looking at, Brigadier," she replied, washing out an Erlenmeyer flask. "The last thing I need is someone underfoot when I'm trying to do my job."

"Doesn't a proper investigation require multiple points of view? For the sake of scientific rigour, if nothing else?"

And now he was pretending he knew anything about her job. Cute. "I am perfectly capable of consulting my peers if I need to."

"Actually, you're not," he pointed out. "Violation of your security clearance."

"Of course." She sighed, glancing back at him; surprisingly, he didn't appear to be laughing at her. "If you must saddle me with an assistant, I want a qualified scientist, not an office boy."

"Miss Shaw," he replied, "an office boy might be exactly what you require." She shot him a look, so he continued. "Someone to pass you your test tubes and tell you how brilliant you are."

She laughed, humorlessly, in reply. "Flattering. But no thank you."

* * *

"Doctor Shaw?"

Liz looked up from her microscope. There was a tiny blonde girl standing in the doorway to the lab. She couldn't have been older than twenty or so. "Yes?"

"Oh, I'm glad I found you!" The girl grinned brightly and shut the door behind her. "I'm Josephine Grant. I'm your assistant!"

Liz stared at her for a moment in disbelief. She was very young to be any sort of scientist; there was no way she had a doctorate unless she was some sort of child prodigy.

And then she remembered the Brigadier's comments about an office boy.

"Oh." Liz summoned her reserves of politeness; no point snapping at a young girl, it wasn't her fault. "It's a pleasure, Miss Grant."

"Pleasure's all mine, Doctor Shaw. The Brigadier sent me round to introduce myself." Jo offered her hand, and Liz shook it obligingly.

It was going to be a long two years.

* * *

The good news was that the Mars Recovery Probe had returned to Earth after a troubled landing and radio silence from its pilot.

The bad news was that the convoy returning it to Mission Control had been stolen.

The Brigadier had already begun a full search of the area between Mission Control and the landing site, but nothing had turned up so far. And back at the base there was nothing to do now but wait.

Liz was not fond of waiting.

"Where are you going?" Jo asked when she rose from her seat.

"To find the Recovery capsule."

"They've already got soldiers out looking for it, haven't they?" Jo, unfortunately, followed her, just as she'd suspected she might. She quickened her pace.

"We don't know what's in that capsule anymore," she replied. Probably alarmist; there was no reason to think the pilot's silence was anything worse than a radio malfunction. But at least it gave her an excuse to get out of mission control. "They might need me if they find something."

"I'll go with you," Jo offered.

"I don't think that's a good idea." The whole point was that she could slip out before the Brigadier sent a convoy of soldiers along with her; it defeated the purpose if Jo tagged along and got into trouble.

"But what if you need help?"

"I'll be all right. Tell the Brigadier I've gone with one of the soldiers." If he thought she went out on her own, he'd certainly send someone after her, and she'd never find the capsule if she had to worry about being dragged back to Control.

Jo tried to say something, but by that time Liz had already shown her pass to the door guard and walked out.

* * *

She chanced a glance at her captors when they changed guards. No good; they kept a careful eye on her the whole time. She sighed and turned back to the computer console.

She'd found the Capsule, at least. She hadn't expected the people who stole it to grab her from behind before she got anywhere near the convoy.

And the worst part was, if she had to be rescued, Lethbridge-Stewart wouldn't bother saying "I told you so". He wouldn't have to.

There was a loud, flat bang somewhere outside the building, and a crash of metal on metal. The guards looked up inquisitively at each other, each gesturing at the other to go find out what it was.

The banging continued, growing closer to the door, and the guards seemed to reach some decision. One of them readied his gun and headed outside, leaving his comrade looking sternly down at Liz.

"Oh, don't worry," she said, dryly, answering his stare. "I won't hurt you." She made a conscious effort not to look at the door as she returned to work. Self-defence was hardly part of her education, but if she really had to she could probably evade one guard. At the very least she could give him a few impressive bruises before he restrained her. If he didn't shoot her, which he probably wouldn't, given that he certainly didn't know what sort of radiation frequencies the alien astronauts needed. Even on the chance that she succeeded, though, that left her with a possibly locked door to contend with...

There was a faint scrambling noise at the door.

She still didn't look up, not at first. That would give her away. But as the guard (who appeared not to hear the noise) wandered away she glanced upwards without moving from her position at the console.

The door was open a crack, and through that crack she caught a glimpse of Jo Grant, shushing her as she opened the door as quietly as she could.

Liz thought fast. There had to be some way to get the guard out of the way; otherwise Jo would only be a fellow prisoner for her trouble (never mind what sort of trouble that was and what she was even doing here). She rose from the console and walked over to the containment field, hoping that the guard would follow her.

She had rather hoped that he wouldn't draw his firearm when he did, but, well, one couldn't have everything. "Sit back down," he said sternly.

"I need to observe them."

"What, can't do that from the computer?"

"Point in fact I can't. If Reegan wants them alive, I'll need to be able to see how they're faring. If you would please put that away; I couldn't escape if I wanted to." She indicated his gun. Jo had crept into the room by now, shutting the door quietly behind her; she was almost halfway to her by now. Which presented a problem, because she still had to deal with the guard.

Jo held up a thick ring of keys. Liz had no idea what she meant - what, was she going to create a distraction? Why did she even have that? - until she pointed at his gun and mouthed _grab the gun_.

Which lacked something as a plan, but at least it was a plan.

Fortunately the guard was diminutive enough for Jo to swing the heavy ring of keys into the back of his head with all her tiny might, and he staggered long enough for Liz to relieve him of his gun and point it at him.

"How did you find this place?" Liz asked, as Jo bound the guard's wrists. She was surprisingly adept at knot-tying.

Jo evaded the question. "I radioed the Brigadier once I saw the building. There should be a jeep on its way."

"Jo," Liz asked, standing up, "did you follow me?"

She avoided her gaze, which was answer enough; how else would she have known where Liz was?

"Are those lockpicks?" Liz continued.

"Mm-hm." Jo perked up at that, looking quite proud of herself. "It was a pretty simple lock. I've cracked locks like that a hundred times. I've had lessons in escapology," she explained, answering Liz's puzzled look. "Locks, ropes, slipping handcuffs, all that."

"Oh, well, of course," Liz replied, as they made their way to the door to await the second guard. "I imagine it's required for all the lab assistants these days."

Jo chuckled, but Liz was genuinely surprised. She wouldn't have suspected Jo of being specially trained in - well, in much of anything; she was barely out of childhood. Certainly not in breaking locks. It wasn't part of an ordinary field agent's qualifications; who took a course like that for fun?

Though she supposed it was no different than the nights she'd spent with a telescope and a star chart at that age. Nobody she knew had done that for fun, either.

Maybe, she thought as she watched Jo wave to the approaching UNIT jeep, there was more to her assistant than she'd previously assumed.

* * *

Fortunately for Earth, invasions were a sporadic occurrence, as were threats of a scale requiring her services. Far more often UNIT was called to provide security for UN functions, or collect and catalog suspicious material or sightings of what (usually drunk) civilians claimed to be aliens. Liz, thankfully, was spared the self-importance of security work, but that didn't quite extend to a day off.

She would have to be ready, the Brigadier explained, as her services might be required at a moment's notice. If they allowed her to go home, they might not be able to reach her when she was urgently needed; precious time might be lost retrieving her. Besides, surely she had some cataloging to do. Every specimen collected at least needed to be identified.

And so she spent the slow days (and there were many slow days) confined to the lab, with a pile of rocks and bits of metal and skeletons that she could tell on sight were quite terrestrial and nothing else to do.

Jo tried to be polite about it, fetching her tools and equipment whenever she needed it and writing down Liz's observations so she wouldn't have to look up from her task so often, but even she couldn't disguise quite how bored she was after a while, and after she realized that Liz shared her disinterest she stopped trying to.

She thought about sending Jo home on days like that, keeping her around mostly for the extra pair of hands. She tried to liven up the atmosphere with idle conversation, but idle conversation had never been her specialty, and after a while they ran out of things to talk about.

She almost felt sorry for her. This can't have been what Jo had in mind for this job - if she'd even signed up instead of being press-ganged. In fact, maybe she had. It occurred to Liz that she didn't actually know. For all she could tell Jo had a perfectly fulfilling job as a student - or, why not, maybe as a thief, maybe that was why she knew how to pick locks - and someone had decided that UNIT urgently needed a young safecracker and informed her that it was now her job to fight off invading alien forces. Maybe Jo was just trying to stay positive about the whole thing.

Liz hadn't expected to be so curious about her assistant, but Jo intrigued her. There were so many surprises beneath her unsophisticated exterior and yet she didn't set out to deceive anyone. She really was that sunny. Her disposition was too unshakable to be an act.

She reminded Liz very much of Jean. Her roommate back at university was bright and vivacious and laughed too loud and talked too much, and when she was first introduced Liz had been quite sure they weren't going to get along. And yet Jean was a scientist by nature, and an impressive one, too; she'd come home one evening to find Liz reading, same as she always did, and she had peeked over her shoulder to see what it was and mentioned that she'd never figured Liz for a microbiologist.

Jean was perplexing; she could talk about her shoes one minute and about her cellular research the next, without missing a beat, and Liz wasn't quite sure how she did it, how she effortlessly straddled what seemed like two discordant personalities. Maybe Jo was the same way.

So one day, after a dreary afternoon recording and cataloging, after the both of them had stopped speaking, Liz put away her notes and told Jo that today she was going to teach her.

"Teach me what?" Jo asked.

"Just the basics," Liz replied. "Rudimentary physics, biology...call it on-the-job training." Liz wasn't much of a teacher; she'd managed to avoid it whenever she could back at Cambridge. But it'd be easier to teach her than it would be to explain the same thing over and over, and anyway it wasn't as if they had anything else to do. "Pull up a seat. We've got a lot to go over."

* * *

"What do you mean, you haven't learned about molecular orbitals yet?"

"…I haven't learned about orbitals yet?" Jo replied shyly, as if she couldn't think of anything else to explain. "I mean, I learned it once, I just…didn't learn it very well."

Liz tapped her pen against the lab table. Already this looked like a bad idea. "I thought you said you'd had you're A-levels. How do you get through a Chemistry A-level without remembering how orbitals work?"

"Ah. Well, it's funny you should –"

Liz looked at her flatly.

"I didn't pass them," she quickly amended. Liz put her fingers to her temples. "But I did pass at O-level!"

"Of course you did," Liz said wearily, not looking up. Where exactly was she going to start? She couldn't even remember what you did and didn't cover in O-level sciences.

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Jo said; she too was staring at the bench when Liz looked back up, looking embarrassed, and Liz suddenly felt determined. No, she'd finally spoken up, and she wasn't going to just slip back into silence for lack of effort.

"All right," she said, sitting up straight and picking her pen back up. "We'll start with orbitals, then."

* * *

"T-test," Liz said flatly as Jo walked in that morning.

"What?"

"I have the data set from the iron-seeding test last week. I want you to perform a t-test and tell me what you find out."

"…alright," Jo replied. She sat down at the desk as Liz handed her the paperwork. "But I thought you already wrote up the results for that."

"You're never going to learn how to apply statistical tests if you don't practice." Liz turned back to the folder she'd received that morning, trying not to look expectant.

There was a silence behind her, not even the scratch of a pencil on paper.

"It's a two-tailed test," Liz said.

"Ah. All right, then."

* * *

"But how come I have to learn all these symbols first?" Jo asked, looking down at the circuit diagram. She traced her pencil around a gate, as if she was trying to memorize which one was an And gate and which one was an Or gate by touch.

"If you're going to learn how something works, you have to know how to talk about it. This is how you talk about circuits."

"Can't I just learn how they work by working with them?"

"I'll let you at the real circuits soon, I promise. But first you have to tell me which one's an And gate."

Jo sighed, and balanced her head on her closed fists. "And why do they use that little squiggly symbol for an inductor, anyway?" she sulked. "Seems awfully imprecise to me."

* * *

"…and that," Liz finished, "is why giant spiders couldn't possibly exist. Simple question of surface-area-to-volume ratios. It couldn't support its own weight. Besides, arthropod circulatory systems wouldn't work in a creature much bigger than that." She held her forefinger and thumb about two inches apart for demonstration. "Any questions?"

"So what about the giant spider yesterday?" Jo asked.

"Wasn't technically a giant spider. It may resemble a spider, but given its origins we can assume it's unrelated to Earth spiders. And this is an example of…?"

"Convergence?"

"Exactly. Besides, Metebilis Three probably has much lower gravity."

* * *

A little less than a year after she first arrived at UNIT Liz was assigned to supervise a drilling project meant to retrieve pockets of volatile gas from beneath the Earth's crust. The project began falling apart almost as soon as UNIT arrived; inexplicable murders among the staff, mechanical failures from overburdened equipment, an obsessed director pushing the drilling far beyond its safe limits.

The main computer simply stopped working just as the mechanisms that governed the drill began to surrender to momentum and lose control. Liz, her hands full with the murders and the machines themselves, sent Jo off to see what's wrong with the computer.

And it wasn't until then, until Jo opened the hatch in the back and realized that one of the micro-circuits was not damaged but missing, possibly removed, and until she recognized the pieces in a pile of broken glass fragments swept hastily aside, that they were able to remove the director and call a halt to the project before something went disastrously wrong.

* * *

From then on their lessons were more lively, with Jo deciding what she wanted to learn next. She took an interest in botany, which Liz wouldn't have predicted, and became something of a problem as it was one of the few fields Liz hadn't specialized in.

And Jo's enthusiasm spread to her as well. She looked forward to the slow days, to the surprise and delight on Jo's face when she grasped completely how something worked, understood some new and beautiful facet of the universe. She looked forward to reliving the pure pleasure of learning through her.

In fact that enthusiasm might even be spreading to the job itself; she wasn't counting down the days as she used to.

But teaching every day was as wearing for the teacher as it was for the student, and on the days they took a break she still couldn't make conversation. For so long they had talked almost exclusively about their job, about whatever alien threat had found its way to Earth this week or whatever subject Jo had chosen to learn about today. How did you transition from that? You certainly couldn't just ask someone about their lives out of nowhere when you'd never been privy to such details before.

And yet Liz wanted to ask. Jo was already so different than what she'd expected and she wanted to know just how deep that difference lay, wanted to sate the curiosity that Jo's aptitude had fired. The silence between them felt like waiting, but she didn't quite know how to break it.

She was grateful when Jo pulled a pack of cards out of her handbag and began to set up a game of solitaire. It was a hook, an innocuous topic to start with. Back at university she would come home some nights to find Jean and the men that followed her playing poker in the dormitory, looking a bit glamorous and interesting despite their warm winter clothes, and she'd been too shy at the time to ask Jean to teach her to play. She hadn't wanted to admit that she had little interest in gambling; she just wanted Jean to teach her, to listen to her explaining the rules, to study this fragment of the life, the person, that she couldn't quite understand.

"Jo?"

"Yes, Doctor Shaw?" she asked, looking up from her cards.

"Just Liz is fine. You don't happen to know how to play poker?"

* * *

"You know, when I started working here the Brigadier told me you had a dozen different degrees," Jo said, dealing them both in again. "How did you manage that?"

"He was exaggerating just a bit, I'm afraid," she replied, looking at her hand. Two sixes and an eight, not too bad. "Just the six."

She laughed. "_Only_ six. Right."

Well, she had wanted to go for a seventh. "I couldn't settle on just one subject, I suppose. Besides, Cambridge was my home. I already knew people there - my research team, the staff at Cavendish, the astronomy department. I'd rather stay with them then find another job God knows where."

"So you might as well get another degree, as long as you're there." Jo teased. She slid another card between them with a flick of her wrist that made the fluorescent lights shine off her many rings.

"Something like that, yes." She smiled. "But it always seemed so limiting, picking just one field of study. There's so very much to understand. So many gaps in our knowledge, every category of it. Who knows what I might miss if I only studied one thing?"

"But six? I mean, how did you find the time?"

"By not doing much else for a few years, I'm afraid. I doubled up on courses for the first two and kept taking one after the other after that."

"That must have been exhausting!" Jo was plainly awestruck

"Not as much as I thought, actually. It kept me busy."

"So how come you haven't gone back?"

"I can't yet," Liz replied, as Jo laid out the last card, leaving Liz with only a pair of sixes to bargain with. "I'm under contract to work here until the end of this year. It gives them time to replace me."

Jo put her own hand of cards down, seeming to forsake the pretence of their conversation. "And you'll go back after that?"

Liz nodded, but she couldn't quite say the word "yes". Could Jo leave if she did? She'd never asked about her terms of service; she might have even been a volunteer. And it wasn't as if Jo could assume her job if she left. No matter how much she'd taught her it wasn't the same as a proper education.

She hadn't met many people like Jo back at Cambridge. "What about you?" she asked. "When's your time up?"

"Oh, I volunteered."

"You did?"

"Yes! There was a lot of competition for this job, you know." Jo bowed her head a bit and looked suddenly shy. "My uncle works for the UN. He's the one who told me about the job, and I figured, well, if he could put in a good word for me..."

"You wanted this job that badly?"

"Of course I did! How many people in the world do what we do?" She brightened back up. "It sounded so exciting when I heard about it. I mean, my uncle didn't say anything about aliens, of course, but still. Keeping the world safe, having adventures..."

Liz glanced around the empty lab. "Not exactly what you signed up for, then."

Jo laughed. "Not really, no. To tell you the truth...well, I thought I'd be some sort of spy or something. Sort of a Ms. Peel."

She would have made a good Emma Peel, Liz thought, briefly entertaining the thought of Jo in a black catsuit before deciding that was unprofessional. "I don't suppose I make much of a Mr. Steed."

"Oh, but you'd look just smashing in a bowler hat!" She was laughing harder now, her smile wide and easy. "We could get you an umbrella and everything!"

The image was so absurd she burst out laughing herself. "Oh, Miss Grant – we're needed!" she replied, in as masculine a voice as she could manage.

"Well, we are, aren't we? We're as close to 'agents extraordinary' as you get." She twirled one face-up card with her fingers and looked askance at Liz. "Don't worry," she said. "I'd rather have you than Mr. Steed."

They were still smiling when they headed home that evening, and as she drove back Liz wondered if it might not be worth staying at UNIT a little while longer.

* * *

The next time they had a free day, Liz grew bold enough to make a different request.

"Could you teach me how to slip a knot?"

Jo tilted her head. "What for? You haven't had to escape from anything for near of two years now."

"Never hurts to be prepared." Not that she was really much concerned with practical application – she wanted to be taught, to learn, to watch Jo take control and surprise her again. But Jo seemed wary, as though making sure this wasn't a test of some sort. Liz stepped past the desk and towards her, nothing between them. "It's high time I learned something from you, isn't it?"

There was a quiet, long and delicate, that she didn't dare to break. And then Jo smiled.

"Technically," she said, "it's called _capsizing_ a knot."

* * *

"Now, normally you won't find anyone who's enough of an expert to tie a real knot, one that's up for the job," Jo said, as she wrapped the cord around Liz's wrists. "Most people will just circle your wrists and tie off the end, but I think you can start with something a little more challenging. There." She let go of her wrists and displayed her handiwork.

All Liz saw was an intricate network of lines and criss-crosses, but her hands were firmly locked in place. "It's called a handcuff knot," Jo explained. "If someone's got any experience typing people up, that's what they'll use. And these two here –" she pointed at two unidentifiable tangles within the mass of rope, "those are two half-hitches that lock the knot in place. You'll want to go after those first; they're what limits your motion the most."

Liz wriggled her fingers experimentally, trying to reach the specific tangles that Jo had pointed out while simultaneously trying to remember where they were. "So I just pull at the ends here, then?"

"I was about to show you!" Jo laughed, and clasped Liz's hands in hers, keeping her still. Her rings were smooth and warm against her fingers, their contrast fascinating.

She watched Jo as she worked, her motions small and precise, and she should have been watching for which twists and strands she undid but she found herself distracted. Jo was so sure, with none of the hesitation she'd displayed when they first met, and when set to work she knew there was a grace to her Liz couldn't help but marvel at.

Without thinking she closed her hand around Jo's just as the first half-hitch collapsed. She shouldn't have – she knew the moment she'd done it she shouldn't have – and yet she didn't let go, not in time to call it an accident and hastily look the other way.

She waited; for Jo to ask what she thought she was doing, for her to push her away, for something. And to her surprise Jo did neither.

"You know," she said, wrapping her own slender fingers around Liz's and giving her a gentle squeeze, "if you _would_ just give me a moment to let you out..."

She returned to the rope around her wrists, but Liz could see the traces of a blush on her cheeks, and anticipation prickled at her own skin as the strings slackened around her, as Jo's busy hands traced arcs against hers. And she meant to reach for her once she was free but it was Jo that kissed her first.

* * *

"Been almost two years," Jo said, affecting nonchalance.

Liz looked up, surprised. She'd honestly lost track of the days. "Has it really?"

Jo nodded. "Three more weeks today."

"You know I used to count down the days?" she said, looking around the lab. It wasn't that she couldn't imagine leaving, but...

"Do you think you'll go back?" Jo asked.

...but she wasn't sure she wanted to. And that uncertainty, thrilling instead of threatening, made her pulse quicken.

"I don't know," she replied. "I do still have quite a lot to teach you."

Before she could think any more on the subject, a voice came through on the radio. Their services were once again required; it seemed a mysterious police box had turned up in the middle of the woods.


End file.
